BICA School Lab | 30 Essex Street
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Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you've read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We'll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there's no pressure to be an expert—bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.

→ Hauser, Arnold. "Prehistoric Times." In The Social History of Art, Volume 1. London: Routledge, 1951.

What did art do before there were museums, markets, or audiences?
Hauser opens his sweeping history of art and society at the very beginning—art's earliest known forms, made by hunting and gathering peoples with no concept of "art" as a separate category at all. He argues that art here wasn't decoration or self-expression; it was practical, even magical, tied directly to survival, ritual, and the rhythms of group life. A hunter painting an animal on a cave wall wasn't making a picture—he was trying to act on the world. This chapter sets up the question Hauser carries through the whole book: how does art's purpose, audience, and meaning shift as societies themselves change? A foundational read for anyone curious about why we think of art the way we do now—and how recent that thinking actually is.